I’m talking at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts about the work I did for their photography Art Cart. It’s sort of like a petting zoo for the history of photography–I made 12 images in 12 different historic photo process–cyanotype, Van Dyke, tintype, color slide, silver gelatin, direct positive paper, calotype (paper negative), albumen carte de visite (with Gocco printed personalized photographer’s back…yessssssss), salted paper, stereographs, Polaroid, and digital image. The Art Cart will be out so you can hold a tintype or look at a 3D stereoscope picture. And we’ll look at new daguerreotypes! Here is the MIA’s description of the evening:

Listen as some of our cities’ most interesting artists give us the back stories about their work in this series of on-stage narratives.

In 2011, the MIA commissioned photographer Lacey Prpic Hedtke to document the museum’s collection using archaic photographic techniques, such as tintypes, collotypes, and stereograms. She commenced upon an intensive exploration of history, representation, and visual interpretation, resulting in a kind of photographic archaeology that unearthed new connections and fresh interpretations of familiar artworks.

Prpic Hedtke will discuss this project, the history of photography, and how she decided to pair certain art works with particular archaic photographic techniques.

Come on manufacturers! We can do this! In the 1960s Heineken and Dutch architect John Habraken collaborated to create the “World Bottle”–a beer bottle that can be used as building material. After Alfred Heineken saw Heineken beer bottles wash up on a Caribbean beach, he was inspired to produce 100,000 World Bottles.

Why can’t we do this now? I love double- or triple-duty items. Bring the World Bottle back, Heineken! We could build fences, garages, houses–you name it. And we could cut down on trash. Brilliant.

I LOOOVE this. It’s the tarot, updated for queers of today! Two dozen artists created a deck of 78 cards, updating the imagery for contemporary wants. They changed the Major arcana to found objects: bones, feathers, bottles and keys. Here’s what one of the creators, Annie Murphy says about the project:

We set out on this project because we wanted to access the ancient tradition of the Tarot, but were unable to relate to what we saw as archaic Christian, Euro- and hetero-centricities of modern decks available on the market. With the Collective Tarot, people can expect to see beings and bodies of size and of color represented, as well as differently-abled, multi-gendered and multi-generational characters. Tarot itself is Euro-Centric, originating (arguably) in 15th-century Italy. It is folk-art-magic that has amazingly survived through centuries of repression. We wanted to be able to use the Tarot as a tool while making the images relevant to ourselves and our communities.

Oh my. Look at these hand cookies made by patissier Ayako Kurokawa of Kuroiwa Patisserie in Brooklyn. Wow! Check out their website–they make all kinds of kooky pastries. I want one of these cookies so I can sneak up behind people and stroke their shoulders with these manicured hands.

Pronto is a new, really-fast-to-put-on condom. Invented by South America’s inventor, Willem van Renburg, developed it in the hopes that it will help to bring South Africa’s HIV rate down, as it is currently home to the world’s largest HIV-positive population. The foil IS the applicator. I hope they’re cheap and available everywhere.

The New York City Department of health developed the NYC Condom Finder, which helps you find free condoms near you. It uses the iPhone’s GPS to locate free condoms near the person who needs a handful.